Looks like BTD and I are both busy today. Here's an open thread until we get back. All topics welcome.

Tomorrow is Rahm Emanuel's last day at the White House. He's returning to Chicago to run for Mayor. Too bad for Chicago.

Who will replace him?

Here are the documents Meg Whitman says her housekeeper gave her in 2000. I'm not impressed by the housekeeper's story, but that might be because of her lawyer. (I like Gloria, but I've never bought into any of her clients' "victim" stories over the years, starting with the woman who claimed Marv Albert bit her.) They seem to start with a grain of fact,and then get blown out of proportion with far too little later on to back them up.

And didn't she pull a similar stunt a month before the recall election in which Gray Davis got sacked and Arnie became Governor - coming forward with a woman who claimed she was groped?

Miller first surfaced around midday on October 6, the day before the recall election, front and center at a news conference called by Los Angeles lawyer Gloria Allred, California’s pugilistic defender of women’s rights. Miller told the assembled media that Schwarzenegger groped her on two occasions while she was a stunt double in the films The Terminator and True Lies.

Whitman's version of the sequence of events sounds plausible, although a little too much like "Don't ask, don't tell" -- and this all could be retaliation over being fired, after Mrs. Diaz "told." The truth is probably in the middle. [More...]

Good on Move On:

There's no better, more principled Democrat in Washington than Sen. Feingold: The only senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act. A steadfast opponent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And a passionate crusader against corporate influence in politics. Right now he is down in the polls and in real danger of losing his seat. Can you chip in?

If you don't want to contribute through Move On, give directly to Russ here.

Speaking for me only

Taliban Dan's BFF is an advocate of stoning:

[A]n August 5, 1996 article in the Gainesville Sun quoted Webster, 'I respect (Gothard) as much as anybody. [. . .] Bill Gothard, in turn, was a close ally of R.J. Rushdoony, considered the father of Christian Reconstructionism and founder of the movement's flagship institution, the Chalcedon Institute.

[Gothard] agreed that Rushdoony's vision for Biblical law should be imposed upon America. That vision included instituting stoning as a form of capital punishment for rape, kidnapping, murder, heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, "sodomy or homosexuality," incest, striking a parent, extreme juvenile delinquency, and "unchastity before marriage."

(Emphasis supplied.) More on Rushdoony can be found in the March 2010 American Prospect article American Taliban ("You may not have heard of R.J. Rushdoony. He is a kind of American Talib".

Speaking for me only

Melissa McEwan:

1. When I wrote passionate criticisms of a Republican administration and Republican Congressional majority who failed to champion LGBTQI equality, assailed women's bodily autonomy, treated Roe as a suggestion, refused to disclose lobbyist visits to the White House, invoked the separation of powers to protect themselves, called for spending freezes on social programs, legitimized rightwing extremists, advocated for offshore drilling, pushed HSAs, escalated a war, thumbed their nose at due process, engaged in black ops, treated scientists with contempt, expanded the executive's extrajudicial powers, demeaned liberal activists, and invoked state's-secrets privilege for bullshit reasons, I was a principled progressive.

[MORE . .]

Regular readers know that I pick many a nit (usually more than a nit) with the New Establishment bloggers (see. e.g., Ezra Klein, Jon Cohn, Kevin Drum, etc.) In a funny post, Matt Yglesias takes a hit:

The more I read Matthew Yglesias* the more he resembles a David Brooks with training wheels. Yglesias is usually inoffensive and has a fine grasp of the obvious. Wherever society needs a Harvard graduate to step up to the lectern and pass on conventional wisdom, he is there.

That's funny. But I don't think it's true. Matt is a pretty varied thinker on most issues. I also think he is wrong about a lot of things, especially his evaluation of politics. But Matt is very smart and most of the time, pretty interesting. More . . .

We have a lot of posts up already today. It's shaping up to be a big news day, but I'll be at work the rest of the day. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

The Supreme Court Justices held their annual conference yesterday and announced 14 cases will receive review. The full order list is here. Via Sentencing Law and Policy, here are the criminal cases:

• Kentucky v. King, concerning exigent circumstances (lower court opinion)
• US v. Tinklenberg, concerning speedy trial rights (lower court opinion)
• Bullcoming v. New Mexico, concerning Confrontation Clause rights (lower court opinion)
• Freeman v. US, concerning crack sentence reduction authority (lower court opinion)
• Sykes v. US, concerning application of Armed Career Criminal Act (lower court opinion)
• U.S. v. Denedo (lower court opinion)

In the Kentucky case, the Court will decide whether police can use evidence they seized breaking into the wrong apartment following a drug suspect. [More...]

Attorney Gloria Allred is coming to the aid of another damsel in distress. This time, it's the former Latina housekeeper of California Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. Allred will be holding a press conference later today. TMZ reports:

We're told the housekeeper has lawyered up with none other than Gloria Allred. The housekeeper and Allred will hold a news conference today in Gloria's office at 11 AM PT, "to tell how she suffered as a long-time, Latina household employee in Meg Whitman's home."

We're told the housekeeper will be filing a legal claim against Ms. Whitman. From what we're hearing, the disclosures could have a significant impact on the campaign and possibly the election.

TMZ will live-stream the conference and says it's one not to miss. It also has this photo-stream of Allred's "Greatest Hits."

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey announced yesterday there will be no criminal charges brought against the four deputy sheriffs who tased jail inmate Marvin Booker, put him face down in a cell, and sat on his back for 90 seconds, after which Booker died.

Booker, a homeless minister, was in the booking process on a petty offense charge of drug paraphernalia possession when he disobeyed a deputy's order to go to his cell, leaving his shoes behind. He wanted to take his shoes with him.

Morrissey said he viewed the video camera footage four times, the deputies were justified in their actions and Booker was responsible for his death:[More...]

While The Hill titles the article Dems, Obama Divided Over Locking In Bush Tax Cuts, the real news out of this article for me is the emergence of honest to goodness deficit hawks in the Senate (as opposed to the phony ones you see on Sunday talk shows. From the article:

Several senators, including Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan (N.D.), are hesitant about giving up an estimated $1.5 trillion in revenue over the next decade, when the federal deficit is unsustainable and there are no obvious spending cuts to fix it. They say it would be smarter to pass a short-term extension of the expiring Bush tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000, then re-evaluate tax policy in a year or two when the economy is stronger.

“I think a far better approach is to extend the middle-income tax cuts for two years and then make a judgment,” said Dorgan. “I don’t think we should get locked into any specifics. It locks us in to say this is going to be permanent,” added Sen. Tom Udall (N.M.). [. . .] Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), an influential member of the Senate Democratic Conference, said a temporary extension is “worth talking about.” [. . .] Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said he would support a short-term extension of the middle-class cuts. “I think that’s a good idea,” he said. “As long as we get them extended now, so we get past the early part of next year with the economy still in extremis in a lot of states like my own.

(Emphasis supplied.) I think that President Obama has played the issue shrewdly - demanding permanent tax cuts for the middle class and vehemently opposing tax cuts for the rich. Real deficit hawks now have a position they can flock to - temporary middle class tax cuts and NO tax cuts for the rich. This can work.

Speaking for me only